Credit

Our Credit business is a leading, global alternative investor, managing assets on behalf of many of the world’s most prominent and sophisticated allocators, including public and private pensions, sovereign wealth funds, large institutions and private clients.

Our overriding objective is to protect and grow our investors’ capital, applying the discipline, rigor and expertise honed through decades of investment experience through a full range of market, economic and credit cycles and across asset classes, structures, geographies and industries.

Founded by Pete Briger in 2002, our Credit business today delivers local expertise with a global perspective in 12 office locations worldwide. Chairman Pete Briger and Managing Partners Drew McKnight, Joshua Pack and Dean Dakolias have worked together for nearly two decades, and today lead a team of approximately 600 professionals, including 160 professionals devoted to asset management.

We believe that the depth and breadth of our resources—our intellectual capital, investment, origination, asset management and servicing capabilities, and our time-tested and disciplined processes—distinguish and differentiate our businesses from the vast majority of market participants.

Lending

Through the Fortress Credit team’s extensive sourcing capabilities, corporate and asset based loans are directly originated to middle market companies in a broad array of industries and against numerous asset class. The Corporate & Asset Based Loans team has the flexibility to structure and price debt across all levels of the capital structure including senior, unitranche, second lien and mezzanine, often with equity co-investments. The team employs a dynamic, multi-faceted underwriting approach which looks to underlying cash flows and enterprise value or to the value of tangible and intangible assets. The team employs this analytical approach in all situations including buyouts, refinancings, growth, rescue, and distressed environments.

Corporate Debt & Securities

The Corporate Securities team focuses on event-driven, idiosyncratic opportunities that exist in publicly traded securities across the capital structure. The team generally concentrates on out of favor industries where securities trade at stressed and distressed levels allowing for substantial upside. The investment model emphasizes deep industry and company-specific research as a backdrop to formulating opinions on intrinsic value, cash flow potential and eventual recoveries. The Corporate Securities team also emphasizes analysis of indentures and credit agreements and other relevant legal documents that may govern the securities in order to formulate further investments, including those surrounding litigation opportunities and inter-capital structure arbitrage.

Portfolios & Orphaned Assets

The Portfolio Acquisitions team invests in portfolios of performing and non-performing loans and assets in a variety of industries acquired from sellers including governmental organizations, banks and other financial organizations. The team is an active buyer of illiquid portfolios and has the ability to transact in size and on an expedited timeframe. The team also acts as a third party manager for large, liquidating, asset portfolios that involve organizational and asset-level complexity.

Real Estate

The Real Estate Loans & Equity teams are focused on investing in distressed real estate loan acquisitions, special situation equity investments and recapitalizations, opportunistic lending, REIT debt and commercial real estate structured products. The teams have long standing distressed investing and asset management experience with a fully tested and integrated origination, acquisition, underwriting, asset and risk management infrastructure.

Structured Finance

The ABS & Residential Assets team has substantial experience investing in asset-backed and residential securities and loans. The team applies a rigorous bottom-up approach to analyzing the underlying borrowers and collateral of each asset, with an emphasis on fundamental value and principal preservation. The team utilizes intensive asset management and risk management techniques to maximize the value of its loan and security positions.

The Fortress Credit business employs a broad range of strategies to invest globally in credit and assets. Our strategies are described below.

Our Credit private equity strategies focus primarily on two areas:

  • Opportunistic investments in distressed and undervalued credits / assets across a wide range of asset classes and structures.
  • Long-term investments in established or emerging category-leading businesses, focused on partnering with management teams to achieve strategies for growth and value creation.

Fortress’ lending strategies focus on investments primarily in senior secured loans across various differentiated lending sectors. The majority of loans are directly originated by Fortress or where we are the lead club arranger.

Fortress’ real estate focus on primarily opportunistic investments in commercial real estate across the United States, Europe, and Japan.

Fortress’ credit hedge fund strategies focus on investments in both private and public credit across loans, corporate debt and securities, portfolios and orphaned assets, real estate, and structured finance.

The following factors differentiate the Fortress Credit team from other credit investors:

The Fortress Credit team has lengthy experience as credit investors. Senior credit team members were actively investing during the US Savings & Loan Crisis and in related RTC opportunities, and led major investment efforts in Asia during the Asian Financial Crisis. The team’s credit experience extends across all of our investment groups (ABS & Residential Assets, Corporate & Asset Based Loans, Corporate Securities, Portfolio Acquisitions, Real Estate Loans & Equity) creating valuable cross-class expertise. The Credit team’s deep, long term history as active credit investors through various types of investment environments has created a process and discipline which set the team apart from market participants who have only recently become interested in credit opportunities as a result of disruptions in global markets.

The Fortress Credit team pursues a broad, diversified strategy covering multiple asset classes and structures, supported by professionals in each of the primary investment groups. This allows the team to move in and out of sectors based on changing circumstances and to tackle opportunities requiring specialization in more than one investment category. This approach positions the Credit team to take advantage of investment opportunities that fall between the cracks of managers without the capability to underwrite diverse pools of credits.

The Fortress Credit team is an active, fundamental value, asset based investor. The team is comfortable with, and to some degree specializes in, difficult credits, difficult borrowers and difficult situations. The Credit team is very focused on properly pricing, structuring, collateralizing, monitoring and, if necessary, litigating to maximize the value of credit investments.

The Fortress Credit team is extremely active in maximizing the value of investments through intensive asset management. The Credit team includes over 80 dedicated asset management professionals in eleven geographic locations. Certain transactions are economically compelling because returns will be generated through intensive servicing, such as in residential whole loans. The Fortress Credit team has been an active owner and operator in managing distressed assets and is fully capable and qualified to continue to manage and service complex assets.

Chairman & Principal

Mr. Briger is Chairman of the board of directors of Fortress Investment Group, which he has been a member of since November 2006. Mr. Briger has been a member of the Management Committee of Fortress since 2002 and is a Managing Partner of the Fortress Credit Funds business, as well as a member of the Fortress Credit Leadership Committee.

Prior to joining Fortress in 2002, Mr. Briger spent fifteen years at Goldman Sachs, where he became a partner in 1996. Mr. Briger serves on the board of several charitable organizations including Princeton University, the UCSF Foundation, Tipping Point and the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park. In addition, Mr. Briger is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the PayPal Digital Advisory board.

Mr. Briger received a B.A. from Princeton University and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Co-Chief Executive Officer & Managing Partner, Credit Funds

Mr. McKnight is Co-Chief Executive Officer of Fortress and a Managing Partner and Co-CIO of the Fortress Credit Funds business. Mr. McKnight serves on the investment committee for the Credit Funds, is a member of the Fortress Management and Credit Leadership Committees and is the head of the firm's Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Committee.

Prior to joining Fortress in February 2005, Mr. McKnight worked at Fir Tree Partners where he was responsible for analyzing and trading high yield and convertible bonds, bank debt, derivatives and equities for the value-based hedge fund. Prior to Fir Tree, Mr. McKnight worked at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in Leveraged Finance and the Distressed Bank Debt trading group. Mr. McKnight serves on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, the Center for New American Security, the Board of Advisors for SMU’s Cox School of Business Alternative Asset Management Center, and the UT Southwestern Medical Center President’s Advisory Board.  In addition, Mr. McKnight is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. McKnight received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Virginia.

 

Co-Chief Executive Officer & Managing Partner, Credit Funds

Mr. Pack is Co-Chief Executive Officer of Fortress Investment Group and a Managing Partner of the Fortress Credit Funds Business. Mr. Pack serves on the investment committee for the Credit Funds, is a member of the Fortress Management and Credit Leadership Committees and is the head of the firm’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Committee. Mr. Pack has over 25 years of credit investment and workout experience through multiple credit cycles. Since joining the Credit Funds Business at its inception in 2002, Mr. Pack has analyzed, structured, and negotiated hundreds of lending, structured equity, net lease and real estate transactions.

Prior to joining Fortress, Mr. Pack was a Vice President with Wells Fargo & Co. in the capital markets group. Before that, Mr. Pack was a Vice President with American Commercial Capital, an independent specialty finance company lending to middle-market businesses that was subsequently acquired by Wells Fargo & Co. in 2001. Mr. Pack serves as a Director on multiple corporate and philanthropic boards.

Mr. Pack attended the United States Air Force Academy and received a B.A. in Economics from California State University, San Marcos.

Managing Partner, Credit Funds

Mr. Neumark is a Managing Partner of the Fortress Credit Funds business. Mr. Neumark serves on the investment committee for the Credit Funds and is a member of the Fortress Management and Credit Leadership Committees.

Prior to joining Fortress in May 2010, Mr. Neumark was a Senior Vice President at Plainfield Asset Management, a large distressed debt hedge fund based in Greenwich, CT, where he served on several boards as well as ad hoc creditor committees. Mr. Neumark also practiced law at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, in the restructuring and finance group and at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP, in the corporate group.

Mr. Neumark received his B.A. in European History from Vanderbilt University with Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude honors and his J.D. from UCLA School of Law.

Co-Chief Investment Officer & Managing Partner, Credit Funds

Mr. Dakolias is a Managing Partner of the Fortress Credit Funds business. Mr. Dakolias also serves on Fortress’s Management and Credit Leadership Committees.

Prior to joining Fortress in 2001, Mr. Dakolias was a Managing Director, Chief Credit Officer and co-founder of American Commercial Capital LLC (a specialty finance company) and Coronado Advisors (an SEC registered broker dealer), both of which were sold to Wells Fargo & Co. in 2001. Mr. Dakolias was previously a director at RER Financial Group where he was responsible for the firm’s acquisition efforts as a principal and as a provider of third party due diligence and asset management. Mr. Dakolias serves on the Board of Trustees for Columbia University, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and the Millbrook School. Mr. Dakolias is also a co-founder and member of the Executive Committee of The Hellenic Initiative, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Dakolias received a B.S. in Physics from Columbia University.

Chief Executive Officer, Global Real Estate

Mr. Pulley joined Fortress in 2007 and is Chief Executive Officer of the Global Fortress Real Estate business and is also a member of the firm’s Management Committee. Mr. Pulley is the Chief Investment Officer of the Fortress Real Estate Opportunities Funds which opportunistically invest primarily in the US and Europe. In addition, as the CIO of Fortress Investment Group (Japan) GK, Mr. Pulley is responsible for the execution of the investment programs of the Fortress Japan Opportunities Funds and the Fortress Japan Income Fund.

Prior to joining Fortress, Mr. Pulley was head of the private equity division in Japan at Credit Suisse where he managed the successful Asian Investment program of DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners (RECP). Mr. Pulley was one of the designated key men for DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners III and was a member of its Investment Committee. Mr. Pulley has over 25 years of real estate investment experience, having started his career at Bankers Trust.

Mr. Pulley received a B.A. from University of California at Berkeley and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

President

Mr. Furstein is the President of the Fortress Credit Funds business and is also a member of the firm’s Management and Credit Leadership Committees.

Prior to joining Fortress in July 2001, Mr. Furstein co-founded and was the Chief Operating Officer of American Commercial Capital (a specialty finance company) and Coronado Advisors (an SEC registered broker dealer). Both companies were sold to Wells Fargo in 2001. Prior to that, Mr. Furstein was co-manager of the opportunistic real estate loan business of Goldman, Sachs & Co. Mr. Furstein was also involved in the acquisition of distressed business, consumer and real estate loans and had responsibility for the management of more than 60 portfolios of such assets. In this role, he designed and oversaw the implementation of financial reporting, tax, compliance and asset management systems, policies and procedures.

Mr. Furstein received a B.A. from Columbia University and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Senior Advisor, Credit Funds

Mr. Sloan is a Senior Advisor to the Fortress Credit Funds Business. Mr. Sloan serves on the Investment Committee of numerous Fortress Credit Funds and is a member of the Credit Leadership Committee.

Mr. Sloan began his career at Wells Fargo & Company in 1987. He held leadership roles in the company’s credit and real estate operations, and headed groups including Commercial Banking, Commercial Real Estate and Specialized Financial Services. In 2016, Mr. Sloan was appointed CEO, President and member of the company’s Board of Directors. He retired from Wells Fargo in 2019 after 31 years of service. Mr. Sloan is a member of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology, serving as Chair of the Board’s Investment Committee. Mr. Sloan also serves on the Board of Governors of the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, and on the Capital Campaign Committee of the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles.

Mr. Sloan is a member of the Advisory Board of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, from which he received an MBA in 1984.